


my body is a temple and i'm breaking it down

by elliptical



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Loves Ronan Lynch, Fluff, M/M, Massage, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-The Raven King, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Touch-Starved, Trust, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, non-sexual D/s, trauma processing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:41:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22147327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: “I can’t,” Adam started, and choked off, and looked startled by his own upset.Ronan squeezed his hand.“I can’t have my body be separate from me like that,” Adam said. “I know it’s trauma. I know it’ll either get better or it won’t and either way, you know, shit happens. But I can’t. I can’t, Ronan.”-Adam asks Ronan for help.  Ronan says yes.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 27
Kudos: 468





	my body is a temple and i'm breaking it down

**Author's Note:**

> i posted the beginning of this a few days ago and then took it down because i wanted it all up at once as a oneshot  
> there's no smut in here but there are nonsexual d/s dynamics that felt intense enough to warrant an M rating just in case

On a sunny summer afternoon nearly identical to a million previous sunny summer afternoons, Ronan found Adam pained on the porch.

This wasn’t a tragic affair. It wasn’t even dramatic. “Pained” here simply meant that Adam was experiencing pain, a fact that was nearly always true. The unusual part was Ronan catching him. Adam was good at hiding wounds and fear with the prowess of a solitary creature, which meant he rarely voiced complaints or winced. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Ronan; it just didn’t occur to him not to smother his hurts.

So Ronan found Adam rubbing at the soreness in his neck and shoulders, which was unusual, and which meant Ronan could mention the pain without sounding pitying. Adam had pressed his fingertips into knotted muscles where he could reach them, but the angle wasn’t good. Ronan could tell the relief would be temporary. Adam stopped as soon as Ronan joined him on the porch, hands dropping to his sides like a kid caught in the cookie jar.

“Sleep wrong?” Ronan asked, by way of greeting.

Adam let out a derisive snort. “Posture’s shit, probably.”

“Probably,” Ronan agreed, and Adam elbowed him without malice. “You want me to kiss it and make it better?”

“Go to hell.”

“You want me to rub your neck for you?” Ronan amended. Truth be told, this had been his immediate interest; the idea of unfucking the constant tension running through Adam's body was invigorating. There were few things he enjoyed more than getting to touch Adam, particularly when Adam enjoyed the touch himself. But too much eagerness sometimes made Adam skittish. It wasn’t related to pride or suspicion, these days - most of Adam’s mannerisms made more sense when likened to a cat’s. You couldn’t come at them squealing and arms-outstretched or they’d run.

Adam gave him an assessing look, deciding whether the offer had been real or a joke. Then he shrugged. “Have at it,” he said.

Ronan stepped behind Adam and placed his hands on Adam’s shoulders.

Adam shied away like a startled animal.

Ronan let go immediately, taking a step back. Adam pressed himself up against the porch railing, then turned to face Ronan with his back to it instead, a deep furrow between his brows. Ronan hadn’t been sure how to quantify the reaction, given Adam’s explicit ten-seconds-ago consent - his only priority was that Adam knew the situation was safe. Judging by the puzzled expression on Adam’s face, _Adam_ wasn’t sure how to quantify the reaction, either. He didn't look afraid, just perplexed.

“Sorry,” Adam said, “you surprised me,” even though Ronan clearly hadn’t. “Here, sorry,” and he turned around again, laying his palms lightly on the railing. “Go ahead.”

Adam had a good degree of control over his physicality. But Ronan could tell his touch on the porch was light only because of how hard he was concentrating. What Adam couldn’t control was the stark tension in the back of his neck or the taut line of his shoulders. He’d looked achy, before. Now he looked like he was bracing for a whipcrack against his skin.

Ronan shook his head even though Adam couldn’t see. “I’m not doing shit you don’t want, asshole.”

“I want it.” Adam said it quickly enough that the words sounded more like a slip of the tongue than a lie. Most people talked faster when they lied, believing that pauses would give them away, like a perfect story was less suspicious than a hazy recollection. But Adam didn’t. When Adam lied or deflected, he did so by offering careful and measured statements that he’d pre-weighted for efficacy. Too-fast reassurance wasn’t his style. When Adam said _I want it_ , he’d accidentally let a truth slide out before considering the ramifications of sharing.

Ronan didn’t point out that Adam _looked_ like he wanted to claw his way up the porch, swing onto the roof, and parkour into a fathomless void. He suspected Adam was infinitely fucking aware of that already.

“Then chill the hell out,” Ronan suggested, amiable.

Adam huffed through his nostrils, something that might have been half a pity laugh. Ronan stepped up behind him. His current working theory was that the first touch had been too sudden, activating the same flight instincts that Adam experienced if people snuck up on him. So he pressed his body to Adam’s back, humming with the warm solid closeness of him, and kissed Adam’s dusty hair. He laid his hands over Adam’s on the porch railing, their arms pressed together. For a long minute, they stood there intertwined, until Ronan felt Adam exhale the held breath in his lungs and let his shoulders slump.

Reassured by the trust, Ronan slid his hands carefully up Adam’s bare, sunlit arms. Over the short sleeves of his t-shirt. He rested them against Adam’s shoulders with the same lightness as Adam's hands on the railing.

In an ideal world, Adam would have tipped his head back against Ronan’s shoulder and closed his eyes. The first reaction would have been proven a singular fluke. In this world, though, Adam’s body coiled up like a spring, even tenser than the first time. Whatever concentration he’d afforded to his hands evaporated; his fingers curled white-knuckled around the railing like in panic, and his shoulders hunched up by his ears. His breath came out a rasp.

Ronan pulled back again, making room between them. Okay. Okay. So this wasn’t going to work, and that was okay. He and Adam had both been figuring out what kinds of touch they liked over the past few months. Some physical touch was good, and some was bad, and this kind of thing would just have to be relegated to the Do Not column.

“Don’t,” Adam said, strained, but Ronan didn’t know what he was saying _don’t_ about. Touching him, or pulling away? “Don’t - I’m fine, honest.”

_“Adam.”_

Now Ronan was angry, and the fire leaked through his voice. He forced himself to swallow more words. God knew he wanted to be patient, _needed_ to be patient with shit like this. And God knew he didn’t have any problem with Adam’s relationship to touch, the positive or the negative aspects of it. Adam’s tension wasn’t making him angry. What made him angry was the idea that Adam thought it was better to suffer contact that he didn’t like for Ronan’s sake than to call a failed experiment quits. If there was one thing Ronan counted on, it was that Adam was too independent to put up with unnecessary distress. And he was a little stung that Adam didn’t seem to realize that if the physical contact made Adam unhappy, it would never bring Ronan any pleasure, either.

“No, it’s not - I’m not - God,” Adam said, and turned around and wrapped his arms around Ronan and tucked his head against Ronan’s shoulder. Ronan let out a long breath, slumping as Adam’s fingers spread against his back. Despite the anger and the tension, their bodies still fit together like they always did, and most of the fight went out of him.

“Don’t fly off the handle, okay?” Adam murmured. “It’s not what you think. I just need a second to get the right words.”

Ronan held Adam against him, careful, hyperaware of all the places their bodies met. He’d touched Adam like this before, dozens of times, but he was still absurdly relieved when Adam didn’t flinch. He kept his arms wrapped tightly, closed fists resting near Adam’s shoulderblades, and Adam relaxed again.

“I don’t know why that’s happening,” Adam said. “I swear. I’m even getting in touch with my feelings, and I'm not upset, so I don’t know why. It’s not me. It’s just my body. That - my body isn’t me, here.”

Ronan considered this and decided it was a decent enough explanation. At the very least, it made more sense than Adam having some overinflated sense of idiotic self-sacrifice. “Okay,” he said.

“I don’t know why it’s doing that. I swear I’m not upset.”

Adam didn’t tend to repeat himself when he’d already imparted all the relevant information; this was as much a sign of his own uncertainty as a reassurance for Ronan. Ronan nodded and kissed the shell of Adam’s ear. “Okay,” he said again. “That’s chill. We just won’t fuck around with it.”

Ronan wasn’t sure how he knew Adam was unhappy. Nothing about Adam’s posture changed, and his heartbeat remained steady where Ronan could feel it thump-thumping through their two thin shirts. Adam’s body was still a warm, solid weight, and he wasn’t making any effort to pull away. If anything, he’d pressed closer, like a rain-drenched cat snuggling up to a human for comfort. Maybe it was the muscles in his back; they’d gone tense again.

Adam would talk when he wanted to, if he wanted to. Ronan knew that. If Adam needed to sort out his thoughts before he verbalized them, Ronan would give him the quiet space to do so. If Adam needed companionship without unpacking the source of his unhappiness, Ronan would give him the quiet space for that, too.

They stood in silence for a while, Adam’s face hidden against the crook of Ronan’s neck, Ronan idly watching the summer sun trace its path across the sky. The grass ruffled beneath a friendly breeze, insects and squirrels and birds and deer and dream creatures populating a fairy world.

Adam finally stirred when the cicadas had begun to buzz, with the slowness of someone shaking off a dream. Rather than pulling back, he rested his chin on Ronan’s shoulder.

“I don’t want it to be something I can’t have,” he said.

This sounded an awful lot like grief to Ronan, this despair over imagined lost opportunities. He wasn’t in the habit of offering meaningless platitudes, but he also felt that accepting the sentiment in silence wouldn’t help. “It doesn’t gotta be that big a deal, man,” he said, and ran his fingers through Adam’s hair. “There’s all kinds of shit we do that feels good. It’s not the end of the world if one thing feels bad.”

“No, it’s not that.” Adam sighed, pulled back, took Ronan’s hand. “Sit with me. I zoned out. My legs feel like cement.”

Ronan sat beside Adam on the porch steps, looking down at their intertwined fingers. He rubbed his thumb in gentle circles over Adam’s skin, waiting.

“It would be different if it felt bad,” Adam said. When Ronan stole a glance at his face, he was gazing out across the yard, his eyes fathomless, mouth pinched at the corners. “I know some things feel bad. God. I can tell when I don’t like something, when I want something to stop happening. When you touch me like that, when you put your hands on me, I don’t want it to stop happening. Not in my head. The physical reaction is completely divorced from the mental.”

Ronan thought he got it. It wasn’t a sensation he was familiar with, but he at least was pretty sure he understood the gist. “So you’re yearning for my sweet tender caress, and your shitty body’s throwing up a wall of _be less homo, loser.”_

“You’re such a shithead.” Adam’s mouth twitched, though, like Ronan had at least sort of reminded him what smiling was like. “My shitty body’s throwing up a wall of _be less vulnerable, loser._ Homo’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Your shitty body needs to absorb a couple lectures about neurotic behavior.”

“Tell me about it.”

They were quiet for a bit, Ronan’s thumb still running the same circles against Adam’s skin, the sun casting a golden early-evening glow across the lawn. Finally, Ronan said, “It’s okay. If your body’s playing catchup with the times. It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Adam said.

His tone was flat. His mouth had gotten less pinched, more downturned. Ronan watched him sharply, refusing to turn his gaze back to the yard, the expression functioning as the question.

“I can’t,” Adam started, and choked off, and looked startled by his own upset.

Ronan squeezed his hand.

“I can’t have my body be separate from me like that,” Adam said. “I know it’s trauma. I know it’ll either get better or it won’t and either way, you know, shit happens. But I can’t. I can’t, Ronan.”

Ronan nodded, even though it wasn’t a situation he could rectify. “Okay,” he said.

“You put your hands on me, and in my head it’s okay, and it’s something I want, and then my body tenses up and flinches and does all this shit I don’t want it to do, and I - I _can’t._ It’s not me. It’s not me doing it. I know it’s not the same as - God, it’s trauma, it’s not magic, it’s nothing. I know it’s not the same. But it feels exactly the same.”

Ronan didn’t need Adam to clarify. He and Adam both had perfect sensory recollections of how Adam’s hands felt choking the life out of Ronan’s throat.

“It’s not the same,” Ronan confirmed, because it wasn’t. For one thing, Adam’s traumatized instincts were easier to sympathize with than a malevolent entity. This wasn’t something working through Adam, controlling him, using him. This was a piece of him that had no conscious or subconscious voice, something that manifested only in anxious physical reactions and misplaced alarm signals. Adam’s body hadn’t yet learned to interact with a world free of constant fear and pain, but Adam’s mind had, or at least had begun the process. The discrepancy led to disconnect. Adam wasn’t possessed. At worst, he was just trapped, prisoner behind instincts and movement he couldn’t control.

Adam closed his eyes.

“But it’s also kind of the same,” Ronan added, because it was. Adam’s autonomy being torn from him had been the worst thing he could imagine. It made sense that this phenomenon caused similar upset. The root of the issue wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was that Adam felt like his body was outside his control, like he’d been locked inside of it, like his choices and desires and thoughts and feelings didn’t make a difference because whatever piloted the body didn’t care.

“I don’t want to be like this.”

Adam said it so quietly Ronan wasn’t sure he’d meant to speak aloud. Wasn’t sure whether the words had been meant for his ears. He scooted closer, unlaced their fingers so he could wrap his arm tight around Adam’s shoulders instead.

“Tell me what you want to do,” Ronan said. He suspected that Adam had a plan, because Adam wasn’t the kind of person who would accept defeat. He also suspected that Adam would address the issue whether or not Ronan was part of the endeavor, because the problem would needle him like a bruise he couldn't stop prodding.

“I want to figure out how to work with it. Past it. Around it. However it goes.” Adam leaned against Ronan.

“How do you want to do that?”

“Mmm.” Adam’s hum blended with the low chirping of insects surrounding them. “Selfishly.”

“Lay it on me.”

“I want your help,” Adam said, and then he tipped his head back and sighed. “I don’t want to ask you to do something you don’t want to do, though.”

Ronan kissed Adam’s hair. He appreciated the sentiment; it was a mark of how far they’d come. Adam wasn’t the same boy whose plans for retribution had the inadvertent side effect of Ronan dead and buried. Ronan was alive instead of dead because of luck; nothing but a coin flip separated him and the double. But he didn’t think he was the same boy from that nightmare anymore, either. For one thing, if Adam asked something of him that he wasn’t willing to give, Ronan thought he could say no.

“Let’s go inside,” Ronan said. “We’ll both be selfish. You can tell me what you want, and I can tell you if there’s not a goddamn snowball’s chance in hell.”

Adam finally did smile, then, a tiny tug of his lips that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Sounds like a plan,” he said, and disentangled himself to get to his feet.

-

So here they were, Adam leaning back against Ronan’s chest on the couch. Ronan’s arms were wrapped around Adam, covering the other’s hands with his own. Adam’s anxiety was palpable, his heart a thrumming bird beating wings against his caged ribs. Ronan was pretty sure that Adam’s fear would render any unexpected touch terrible right now, so he wasn’t doing anything unexpected. Instead, he kissed over Adam’s ear and jaw and cheek and the side of his neck, over and over, until Adam laughed and mumbled, “Shit, that tickles.”

Ronan smiled and blew a raspberry against the side of Adam’s neck. Adam’s arms flexed as he tried to raise them, probably to swat Ronan away. Ronan curled his fingers around Adam’s hands and held them still. This was the first test.

Adam tugged against the grip, briefly, and then released a shaky stream of air. Ronan kissed his hair, rubbed his thumbs over Adam’s skin. “This okay?” he murmured.

There were two warning signs Ronan was on the lookout for. The first was fairly obvious; if Adam struggled or panicked or thrashed, he’d let go immediately. Panic wasn’t the goal of this exercise. Ronan didn’t have it in him to force Adam to stay in a situation that frightened him, even if Adam had given him permission (and Adam _had_ given him permission, and Ronan had told him no).

The second was more subtle. Tension wasn’t the only means Adam’s body had of betraying him. When Adam was afraid of being hurt, he’d sometimes slip away, disappearing deep inside himself into the same place he used to seek Cabeswater’s refuge. His gaze would go distant, his answers remote and monosyllabic. He wouldn’t be present at all, not until his body decided the danger had passed and let him feel sensation again. “I need you to tell me when you’re not okay,” Ronan had said, firm, and Adam had closed his eyes and replied, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to.”

Now, though, Adam wasn’t exhibiting those signs of distress. There was a skittish nervousness in him, but it hadn’t escalated to fear. “I’m okay,” he said. His right hand jerked a little in Ronan’s grip, outside his control, and Ronan held it more firmly with his fingers. “I’m okay.”

“Okay,” Ronan said. Adam’s anxiety had the curious side effect of making Ronan calmer. Adam needed Ronan to be in control of the situation, here, so he would.

Adam exhaled again, too shallow. Ronan wasn’t a mind reader, but he’d gotten pretty good at reading Adam. So he brought their clasped hands up to rest against Adam’s chest, over his heart, and said, “Relax, Parrish.”

“I’m relaxed,” Adam said. “No, I’m not,” he added after half a second, and Ronan let out a snort.

“I can fucking tell.”

This wasn’t anything unexpected to either of them. Adam couldn’t surrender control without a fight, physically or mentally. Even if he implicitly trusted the other party, even if he knew the situation was safe, even if he wanted everything that was happening. Adam resisted helplessness like a person clawing at the earth to keep from pitching over a cliff. He’d keep clinging even when he’d shredded his fingernails, coated his hands in blood, exhausted his muscles. Even when he knew there was a safe, soft landing below if he let go.

This was something he’d explained to Ronan, when they’d sat in the kitchen talking about his vulnerabilities. What he wanted - what he _needed_ \- was for Ronan to pry his tightened grip loose when he couldn’t manage it himself.

Ronan said, “Breathe out, Parrish. All the way.”

It took Adam a few panted inhales, but then he let out a long breath. His shoulders loosened as his lungs emptied. Ronan hooked a leg around Adam’s, curled as protectively over his back as he might if he was sheltering Chainsaw. He held Adam’s hands still against his chest, felt the change in Adam’s posture as he stopped gulping air like he’d be deprived of it any second.

“Okay,” Ronan said, once Adam was breathing normally again. “That’s good.”

Adam’s chin had dropped down toward his chest, his eyes closing. “I’m trying," he said, though Ronan hadn't meant the words as a rebuke. "It’s hard.”

“I know.” Ronan adjusted his grip and pressed his thumb gently against Adam’s wrist, feeling the thrum of his pulse. “We can stop if you want.”

“I don’t want to stop.”

“Okay,” Ronan said. “Then I need you to keep breathing like a normal fucking human being.”

“Mmkay.” As Adam’s chest rose and fell less shallowly, Ronan felt the frantic beat of his heart start to slow down, too. He settled down in small increments, resting his weight against Ronan’s chest, accepting the grip of Ronan’s hands as an embrace rather than a restraint. Recentering himself was something Adam needed time to do; force wouldn’t be helpful here. Ronan could be patient. He stayed still, and his patience was rewarded when Adam had gone calm and quiet, breathing with ease.

“Still good?” Ronan asked, because he was pretty sure the answer was _yes,_ but he needed to be certain that Adam was relaxed rather than dissociating.

“I’m okay. I’m here.” Adam tipped his head back against Ronan’s shoulder, much the way Ronan had imagined he might on the porch. “I want to hold you. It’s annoying me that I can’t.”

Ronan smiled, nuzzling Adam’s cheek. “You can hold me all you want in a couple minutes. Be patient.”

“Asshole,” Adam said fondly. Ronan nuzzled him again, until he huffed a laugh and leaned away. “That still tickles!”

“We all have our burdens to bear,” Ronan told him solemnly, but he pulled back. “I’m gonna let your hands go now.”

He did, letting his arms curl loosely around Adam’s ribcage instead. This wasn’t a restraint; Adam could push him away, stand up, stretch. Rather than doing those things, though, Adam lowered his hands to rest gently against Ronan’s arms. Ronan had pressed his face back into Adam’s hair, so there was no telling what expression Adam had on his own face, but his hum was contemplative.

“That was okay,” he said. “You holding me like that.”

“Yeah?” It had, in a way, been another experiment, a test to see whether Adam could feel safe giving up any bit of control. Ronan was pleased by the success. “What about me being firm with you? Good or bad?”

“Good.” Adam shifted, turning so he was laying on his side instead, pressed up against Ronan, head tucked into the crook of Ronan’s neck. The bit of ear Ronan could see turned faintly pink as he said, “I’m gonna need you to keep doing that.”

This, Ronan could manage. It wasn’t that he had much interest in ordering Adam around for the sake of it, and he didn’t think Adam had much interest in being ordered around to begin with. But having someone else to listen to helped when Adam’s body or mind was conspiring against him. Ronan could relate to that.

“Anything you didn’t like?”

“Nothing you did,” Adam said. Ronan couldn’t offer a raised eyebrow from this angle, but he _could_ give an incredulous grunt. The noise said, _You’re getting points off for incomplete answers, Parrish._ Adam curled his fingers into the fabric of Ronan’s shirt and added, “It’s just hard. It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just... it’s hard.”

Neither of them had expected it not to be hard. “How can I make it easier?” Ronan asked.

“I’m not sure you can. No, that’s not true.” Adam’s fingers tightened in Ronan’s shirt. “The firmness helps. More than I would’ve expected. Can you just - I need you to - If you get upset, it’s going to make me upset.”

“Okay,” Ronan said. “I won’t get upset.”

“I mean it. If I fuck up, just-” Adam’s breath hitched. “I can’t deal if you get upset.”

Ronan’s chest tightened. He pried Adam’s fingers loose from his shirt, gently, and raised Adam’s hand to his mouth to kiss each of his knuckles. One by one, soothing. “I won’t get upset,” he promised, and a little of Adam’s tension eased. “If you’re an asshole, I’ll wait until we’re done to pick a fight.”

“Thanks.” Adam’s tone was dry, but there was an undercurrent of sincerity.

Ronan kept pressing kisses to Adam’s hand. This was less to soothe and more because he appreciated any opportunity to have Adam’s fingers near his mouth. Adam knew it, too, and surrendered to the attention without a fight. Ronan could have happily spent the rest of the night kissing every inch of Adam, until he shivered and sighed and stopped thinking so damn hard, but Adam’s shoulders were still tense, and his mind was still restless. So Ronan gave himself just a minute or two to lavish attention on Adam’s fingertips, and then he rubbed his other hand over Adam’s back.

“I’m gonna give you a massage,” he said, “if that’s still what you want.”

“It’s still what I want.”

“Sit back up, then.” Ronan released Adam’s hand and nudged him into a seated position, then tugged Adam’s shirt up over his head, tossing it aside. “Shit, man,” he observed as Adam leaned forward, “you’re tenser than a fucking bowstring.”

This was true. Any work Ronan had done to relax Adam over the past few minutes had been wiped away like a painter smearing a canvas clean. Ronan knew it wasn’t the prospect of being touched that had knotted up the cords in his neck, pushed his shoulders up toward his ears. Adam was afraid of his own reactions, afraid that his body was an entity that existed outside his conscious control. Fear made an already-tense Adam more tense than average stress ever could.

“Yeah, well.” Adam rested his elbows against his thighs, gripping his knees to have a place to put his hands. “It is what it is.”

If this didn’t work, Ronan was going to hate himself for making Adam’s pain worse. But this was also something Adam had explicitly asked for - swallowing pride and agitation to do so - and Ronan knew it wouldn’t really be his fault if it wasn't successful. Anyway, the possibility wasn’t something to dwell on now.

Ronan laid his hands on Adam’s shoulders.

Adam flinched away, like they’d both expected he would. Rather than letting him go, this time, Ronan dug his fingers in and held tight. Adam fought to twist out from under Ronan’s grip - no, Ronan corrected himself, Adam’s _body_ was fighting. Unless Adam had lied, this was an animal instinct that had nothing to do with what Adam’s mind wanted. And Adam had had no reason to lie. “I don’t know how deep it goes,” he’d told Ronan as they talked about it. “I don’t know how much it’ll take for me to be the one in control again.”

Ronan hooked a leg back around Adam’s and held his shoulders steady. The energy humming through Adam was wild, restless, different from Adam’s ordinary calm. “I got you,” Ronan told him, his voice low. “Easy, Parrish, I’ve got you.”

Adam whined, low in his throat. His knuckles were white where his hands gripped his knees. Ronan pressed his thumbs into the knotted-up place beneath his shoulderblades. “I got you,” he repeated.

Adam stopped fighting, but in such a way that Ronan couldn’t tell whether he’d regained control over his reactions or his body had just deemed fighting ineffective. He held his breath, and then Adam said, strained, “Pin me down.”

The request surprised Ronan, but he wasn't about to show it. “Okay,” he said. Manhandling Adam was not on the list of things he felt comfortable doing, at the moment, aside from the mechanics involved in keeping him still. Wrestling Adam into place felt like a different beast. Ronan wasn’t going to pretend to be a mind reader, but it seemed reasonable to think that such an action might have a bad effect on Adam’s mental state. So he released Adam’s shoulders and disentangled himself, standing up. “Lay down,” he added. “On your stomach.”

Pulling back also afforded Adam a chance to pull the plug, if he wanted to. Adam met Ronan’s eyes, his gaze sharply assessing rather than distant. He didn’t look afraid; or at least, he didn’t look afraid of Ronan. Ronan kept his own gaze hard and uncompromising, more sure than he actually felt. The tension stretched between them, and then Adam nodded and splayed out on the couch.

Ronan gave himself a second to let out his breath, emptying his lungs and centering himself the way he’d asked Adam to earlier. Then he straddled Adam’s waist, resting his weight on Adam’s lower back. He’d expected Adam to fight this as well, so he was surprised when Adam relaxed, pressing his face into the couch cushions. Ronan made a mental note of that.

Adam had tucked his hands under his body. When Ronan touched his shoulders again, they drew up like he was trying to duck away without having anywhere to go. Ronan was working with conjecture, here, but he thought Adam might have asked to be pinned because the weight soothed him. Being in a position where he couldn’t escape would keep his body from trying so hard to get away. So Ronan followed his instincts and pressed his thumb against the back of Adam’s neck.

He felt Adam’s muscles tense more than saw them. Adam was so wound up that it was a wonder he hadn't torn anything. Ronan pushed his thumb deeper into the tension in response, unyielding. Adam’s breath left him in a quiet croak of something that might have been pain or relief. Ronan had no intention of treating Adam roughly in the long term - God knew he didn’t want to hurt Adam - but he rubbed his thumb in a slow, pressure-heavy circle. Adam made another quiet sound, and Ronan did it again, and then Adam’s breath left him entirely in a rush.

It was the same way he’d loosened up earlier, the fear winding out of his muscles. Ronan relaxed his grip in response - still firm, but no longer holding Adam down. “You with me, Parrish?”

“Mmm.”

“Adam.”

“I’m here. It’s me.” Adam’s breathing was softer now, more like they were laying idly in bed together than like Adam was facing down the firing squad. “I love you.”

Ronan bit his cheek to stifle a smile, but it didn’t work. “You’re gonna plead the fifth about that later.”

“I am not.” Adam considered. “Well, maybe.”

Ronan laughed. “Blackmail material for ages. All right. I’m gonna unfuck your shoulders now.”

“Okay,” Adam said. He sounded much more himself than he had a few minutes ago. “I think I’m all right now.”

“Do you want to get up?”

“No. It’s good like this.”

Adam might have an existential crisis about the situation later, but Ronan didn’t see anything unusual about the occasional soothing potential of another person’s weight. He ducked to kiss Adam’s hair, and then he went to work.

Ronan moved slowly, carefully, taking the full measure of Adam’s soreness. Adam’s tension had layers, snarls and knots built up over years with no relief. Now that the initial reaction had passed, Adam wasn’t tensing worse under Ronan’s touch. Ronan kept the pressure light, starting at the nape of Adam’s neck and moving downward, running circles over his skin to ease away the surface stiffness.

By the time he reached Adam’s shoulders, Adam’s breathing had eased into a similar rhythm to sleep. Ronan knew he was still awake, though, by the occasional contented hum or low hiss. The junction where Adam’s shoulders met his neck was a mess on both sides. Ronan focused his attention there, alternating the kneading of his hands with the softer patter of his fingertips. After a few minutes of this, Adam moved for the first time in a while, squirming away from the discomfort.

“Should I stop?” Ronan asked.

He let his hands pause while Adam considered the question. “It’s not bad,” Adam answered finally. “It’s just sore as hell.”

“Should I _stop?”_ Ronan repeated.

“Little gentler.”

Ronan ducked down to kiss Adam’s hair again, a silent thanks for the honesty, and then went back to the massage. He discovered a tender knot of enormous size under Adam’s right shoulderblade, painful enough that Adam cried out when he pressed on it. “Please,” Adam gasped, and Ronan paused again, unsure what he was asking for.

“No,” Adam said, “don’t stop, please,” undone in ways that Ronan had never imagined and couldn’t have rejected if he tried.

“I got you,” Ronan reassured him. Even the gentlest pressure against the sore spot made Adam whine, choked, into the cushions. “Shh, I got you. I got you. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”

Adam’s breath hitched. Ronan kept working against the sore spot, exceedingly careful, aware that the wrong kind of pressure had the potential to injure. He didn’t think he’d be able to loosen the entire knot tonight, but he could at least reduce the level of pain it was causing. When Adam jerked under his hands, involuntary, like it was taking concentration not to thrash, Ronan eased up. “Okay,” he said, “little break,” and rubbed his palms back over places he knew he’d soothed instead.

Adam’s voice broke when he spoke, despite the attempted casualness of the words. “Your hands have to be getting tired as hell.”

Ronan’s hands _had_ been tired for a while, but his mind wasn’t. As long as there was still pain in Adam's body to address, he wanted to address it, fatigue or no fatigue.

“They’ll manage,” he said.

“I think I,” Adam said, and his voice broke again, “I think I’m done for now. For the night. Please.”

Alarm shot through Ronan - had he hurt Adam? - but he schooled himself to calm as he released his grip and slid off of Adam’s back. He crouched down beside the couch, brushing his knuckles gently against Adam’s temple, pushing a curl of hair behind his ear. “Okay, hey,” he said. “We’re done. Do you want me here, or do you need to be alone?”

Adam reached out and grabbed Ronan’s wrist with more vehemence than was necessary. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Well, damn,” Ronan said. “All right.”

“Sorry.” Adam let go. “Lay down with me?”

Ronan couldn’t have been more pleased by the request. Wedging himself in beside Adam was an endeavor that involved a lot of careful balancing, and he was about to recommend that they move to his room when Adam scooted on top of him. Ronan wrapped one arm tight around him, wanting him close; it was a hell of a lot easier to show his feelings than to say them aloud. When Adam looked down at Ronan, his eyelashes were sticking together, and the light glittered on his cheeks. A pang went through Ronan. He didn’t know how long Adam had been crying.

He raised his other hand to cup Adam’s cheek, brushing away the wetness, stupidly relieved when Adam didn’t flinch. “Did I-”

“No,” Adam said. “No, I’m okay. I’m not upset. You were perfect.”

“You’re crying,” Ronan observed. He hoped it sounded more like concern than an accusation; he didn’t mean it as an accusation. He just needed an explanation so that his heart could climb out of his throat.

“I’m okay,” Adam said again. “I’m not hurt. I just got overwhelmed.”

Ronan leaned up, pressing a soft kiss to Adam’s mouth. “Bad overwhelmed or good overwhelmed?”

“Good, I think. Neutral at worst.” Adam laid his head down on Ronan’s shoulder. The worst of the tension in him had dissipated, as had the restless fight-or-flight energy. Ronan snagged a blanket from the back of the couch and arranged it over them both.

They were quiet for long enough that Ronan thought Adam might have fallen asleep. That was all right. Ronan didn’t need to have a long talk about everything Adam had felt and was feeling; he trusted Adam not to lie to him, and so the reassurance that Adam was okay combined with the warm weight of Adam’s body was enough. There’d be time for questions later, about whether Adam wanted to do anything like this again, about whether or not he liked the touch, about whether Ronan had done everything he could to make Adam feel safe. For now, Ronan just needed the knowledge that Adam still loved him, trusted him, wanted him.

Adam’s voice, when he did speak, was sleepy and slow. “I don’t always know what to do,” he mumbled, “with you loving me how you do. Tonight I guess the answer was ‘cry.’ That’s all. They weren’t bad tears.”

Ronan hugged him tighter. _“Semper tu scito me adorare te.” Always know that I adore you._

_“Scio,”_ Adam replied with a hum. _I know._ “I think I’m falling asleep.”

“We can go to bed.”

“Don’t wanna get up,” Adam said, and then it was impossible to argue with him because his only response was a light snore.

**Author's Note:**

> i don't speak latin so pretend that says what it's supposed to if it doesn't o/


End file.
